


Quiet Moments Stolen

by josephina_x



Series: the Quiet Moments Stolen 'verse [1]
Category: Smallville
Genre: (and annoyance), (and more sighing), (and resignment), (lots of sighing), Alien Problems, Angst and Humor, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Kryptonian, Kryptonite, Post Finale, Sighing, Your Judicial System Hard At Work, and, menaces, plus - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:39:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hm. Looks like you got yourself an alien problem, son."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quiet Moments Stolen

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Quiet Moments Stolen  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com/)  
> Fandom: Smallville  
> Pairing: Lex, Clark  
> Rating: PG  
> Spoilers: general for all seasons; takes place after season finale, but before the seven-year-jump  
> Word count: 5000+  
> Summary: "Hm. Looks like you got yourself an alien problem, son."  
> Warnings: Un-beta'd.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: Wow. This has been sitting around forever gathering dust. --I think I'll post it! (yes, this is my default solution for everything these days ^_^;; )

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex was curled up on his side on the old sofa in the barn loft. Clark's old 'Fortress of Solitude'. He stared at the bare wall in front of him and let his eyes unfocus. His eyelids slowly drooped closed.

It was nearing the end of fall, and there were the beginnings of a chill in the air as the sun set over the horizon, throwing gold and red across the interior of the barn in a blazing but muted riot of color. Lex shivered slightly as the temperature dropped, and pulled his knees closer to his chest, his arms wrapping loosely about them.

His breathing deepened, and his muscles began to relax, slowly. Very slowly. He felt the weight of it, as the lassitude spread through him. It wasn't easy to just let it happen. Lex had learned his lesson well over the years: control meant a measure of safety was possible, however small. To let go of that control -- that full awareness of himself, his surroundings, his enemies -- and just be, living in the moment, was dangerous, possibly fatal. He was trying not to think of that right now. It would be counterproductive.

He shivered again and grimaced as he felt his muscles relax slightly, then spasm and tense up again, worse than when he'd first laid down, only to unwind at an even more glacial pace than before. This was normal. This was an instinctual caution, which he daren't fight -- he needed this, at all other times; it had saved him more than once, this sense. It took a while for his body to begin to believe it was safe, when his mind already suspected this was so. Trying to force himself to relax simply did not work -- it only served to create a different sort of tension, mental and physical -- a house divided, fell. The only way to reach that final state was to wait and allow himself to take the time he needed to eventually get there.

Finally, well past sunset and on into the darker hours of the night, he finally felt the last of the near-constant tension drain from his limbs, almost painful as it happened and then suddenly _gone_ as if never there. He took a shuddering breath and his fingers twitched slightly as he let it all out again. The cool night air slipped across his skin as he breathed, like a sheer satin sheet it slid over the thin layer of clothing he wore, chilled and tickled as it trickled in between his lips and slipped down his throat.

He slitted open his eyes and watched his own soft exhalations, now visible under the pale moonlight, small puffs of warm 'smoke' from his mouth. Dragon's breath.

WIth a final long exhalation, he shifted his limbs slightly, spreading out a little more across the broad cushions, almost melting into the couch. He was heavy and dark, calm and relaxed, soothed by the isolation and the peace.

He shifted his gaze up slightly, to his hands, laying in front of his eyes with fingers loosely curled, half-spread and not quite grasping. He sighed again and closed his eyes. He made a minute movement, shifting his shoulders and letting his head fall back further, his neck muscles now supporting even less of the weight.

He lay there in the moon-lit nighttime gloom and did nothing but breathe for an age.

Then, finally, he rolled onto his back and slowly, carefully stretched out at full-length, letting himself luxuriate in the feeling like a contented housecat.

He ended the stretch with a sigh and tucked one elbow under his head, cushioning it and staring up at the wooden rafters of the barn, eyes half-closed but feeling quite mentally-alert. As his eyes adjusted to the deeper shadow, he caught sight of vague traceries of spiders come and gone, shimmering as a light breeze blew in from the window and furled the small webs as like a score of little sails in the night's soft wind.

He closed his eyes again and let his thoughts drift. He was glad Clark wasn't here, offworld on something-or-another with the League. He wouldn't have dared come out here if he hadn't been. Superman may be living in Metropolis now, and Lex may have silently claimed Smallville as his own in the passing, but Clark was still territorial as hell when it came to certain things. Judgmental, hypocritical, and full of moralizing sermons and self-righteous fury, self-important and self-centered as he'd ever been, Kal-El was even less trustworthy these days, for all that he'd seemingly come out into the open, into the light of day.

At least he'd left Lex the night for his own. Usually.

It would have been nice to, for once -- just once -- have been able to have found some peace here with Clark. To have been been able to have some memory of having come here, back when Lex had been naiive enough to think that they were friends, could be friends, and done this then. To have felt truly warm and secure, curled up in Clark's arms. Just once.

Lex let the tears leak from his eyes; no-one was here to see, and he'd come to terms with this particular feeling long ago.

Lex knew now that it wasn't that Clark didn't trust easily; it was that he didn't trust at all. Lex had had no chance from the start. Too many falsehoods already accumulated over so many years of life and spun up into a nearly impenetrable wall, long before they'd ever met. Not only was it that Clark didn't know how to live without the secrets and lies, but he felt no pressing need to even try; the very idea scared him. Even Lex knew that was no way to live. It was why Lex had tried to be as honest and truth-seeking as possible, after the bridge, because if he couldn't be honest with even his own self... Clark might have been his unlikely savior, but Lex had known, even then, that in this, at least, Clark had been the one who had needed a role model.

And Lex had tried, oh how he had tried. He'd tried to be as honest as he possibly could with him, but when a teenage boy holds your heart in his hands and crushes it, smashes it thoughtlessly, continually, over and over again, with self-righteous anger and painful accusations, it was _so_ much easier to leave some things unsaid, to _not_ share, to _not_ ask and be answered. The best and the worst, left to rot on the vine, though that wasn't how it had begun; no, not at all. For once in his life, Lex had tried to open himself up to another person, completely. He'd needed someone to help him escape his lifelong torture, arduously being crushed under by Lionel, cut to shreds inch by inch because he couldn't harden himself enough to suit his father. Lex had needed softness and warmth and light. He'd been dying from the lack. He'd thought Clark was the one who could give him that, that he'd be welcomed in return with a gentle sort of grace. But what he'd actually received had been something far different, entirely unexpected. He'd made a gross miscalculation on his part, one that spoke of too much blind, incautious hope and and not enough hard, cold reality. The disappointment lived in him to this very day.

He honestly couldn't blame Clark all that much -- he'd been all of fourteen, Lex twenty-one, and if Lex had been thinking clearly at all... But he hadn't been. He'd been desperate for even the smallest crumb of affection, having been deprived of love and acceptance for _years_ , and that gnawing hunger had only hit him all the worse, reawoken with a vengeance, with only the merest taste to sustain him here and there. He hadn't been thinking at all. Meanwhile, Clark had had his own share of problems, with his birth parents and his adoptive parents and everyone else. Lex was _still_ uncovering shards of leftover knowledge to this day, and lord knew what else Lex had never, would never find out about what had happened with Clark; what he'd pieced together already had at times been horrific, rivaling anything Lionel had ever perpetrated upon Lex himself.

Lex by no means considered himself the poster boy for sanity, decency, and respect, but Clark had more than his fair share of his own issues, as well.

Lex grimaced and stretched again. He was working himself up thinking about this, when really all he wanted to do was leave the tension behind for a time. Was it really too much to ask of the world, to give him a little peace, just once in a while?

As he heard a vehicle pull up outside and come to a stop, Lex realized that the answer was perhaps, _yes, it was_. If he closed his eyes he could nearly hear the engine ticking over as it stuttered down to a halt and began to cool down.

Lex sighed inaudibly and tried not to grimace. There was no reason to panic, after all. Certainly, people might stop here quite often. This far out, and at night, a body would want to pull over farther off the road to rest... or perhaps get out and stretch, Lex amended as he heard a door slam, metal-on-metal, and blinked his eyes back open at the sound. Maybe whoever it was needed to reorient themselves, having gotten lost. This far out, away from the city lights and regular road signs, Lex could see that happening quite frequently. He frowned, but firmly told himself that it was nothing as he regulated his breathing, and attempted to relax more fully once again, though he couldn't help twitching at the odd unexpected scuffling sound or two. He began to drift off again...

Then he heard the sound of footsteps approaching the barn and Lex's eyes snapped back open. He felt tense all over again, and quickly slid upright... before changing his mind, pulling his feet back up, and continuing the motion. Instead of standing he slipped further back behind the armrests, lying belly-down on the couch cushions, perfectly flat.

He calmed his breathing and listened. No-one should be here, and he hadn't recognized the sound of the engine to identify the make and type of vehicle.

Movement down in the center of the barn, and Lex tensed up completely again all-at-once -- and suddenly felt the absence of his protective offensive weaponry, aching like a missing limb. Then he remembered that he'd taken off his shoulder holsters when he'd removed his coat, their presence being a constant weighty reminder to always be on his guard and not conducive to relaxation. He mentally cursed and glanced to his side. His breathing quickened as he heard the sound of the footsteps striking down, getting closer, traveling upwards, up the stairs... and so Lex slid off of the couch quicksilver-fast to the simple wooden chair across the loft, snatched a pistol up from the closest holster, cocking and aiming it all as one motion towards the break in the top banister of the staircase.

He froze when he saw the red-S.

...Clark looked nearly as surprised as he was to be facing him, in turn.

The bastard -- he wasn't even supposed to be on the planet!

"What are you doing here?" Superman thundered, recovering quickly. He floated up the rest of the way and put his fisted hands on his hips.

Lex had the sudden urge to shoot him. ...Or run.

Instead, he stood his ground, reigned in his temper and said, "This is private property -- get out."

"You're trespassing," Kal-El accused, shifting from an aggressive gesture to a more closed-off 'dominating' one: arms crossed in consternation.

"No," Lex replied patiently. "The only one trespassing here is you." He raised his gun, bringing the barrel in line with where the Kryptonian's heart resided. "Get out. I won't ask you again," he ended, sounding far calmer than he felt as he heard his heart-pulse hammering in his ears.

Clark's look grew darker, and Lex knew then that he wouldn't be able to reason with him. Typical. Why did this always surprise him, when it _always_ turned out this way?

When Kal-El advanced on him in a rush, Lex fired.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex sighed from deep in his chest as he leaned back against the wall and stretched out his legs, then crossed them at the ankles. He had just traded his rather comfortable ratty old couch for a rather unconfortable bench in a small cell in the Smallville Sherriff's office that smelled vaguely of urine. And at this rate, he was going to be here all night.

Well, life had never been fair to him before; why should he expect things to suddenly become different now?

In retrospect, he shouldn't have fired on Superman. He'd pulled the wrong gun, and only unloaded common lead at his chest. Clark had, of course, immediately whisked him off to incarceration for the offense. To add insult to injury, Clark hadn't seen fit to take him all the way to Metropolis, and when he had told the Sherriff that Lex had been trespassing on private property, the Sherriff had taken Kal-El at his word and locked Lex away.

Lex didn't blame him. Nobody wanted to argue with an alien at two in the morning. And the sherriff had looked a bit apologetic as he turned the key, and muttered in embarrassment what his choices were -- about how their old Judge Ellis wouldn't be inclined to let him out if they called now and woke him up, but that sometimes the Judge got up real early, and he'd put in a good word for Mr. Luthor with him for his having stayed overnight despite the inconvenience, if he liked? Lex had nodded his assent to the man for the latter option. Sometimes it wasn't completely unpleasant to be recognized.

Lex tilted his head back and felt it softly impact against the hard wall. He closed his eyes and tried not to laugh hysterically. He wasn't even wearing any shoes.

He blinked his eyes open in surprise when he heard two soft 'thunk'ing sounds as someone threw something into the middle of his cell. He opened his eyes and stared down at the tennis shoes.

Oh. The sherriff _had_ noticed.

Lex couldn't help but smile a little wearily at the sherriff's retreating back. He was fairly sure that they must be the man's own spare pair of running shoes. Lex bent over and down, and scooped them up. They slid on a bit loose, but that was fine -- better than too tight -- so Lex undid the knots and started lacing them up properly.

Once he was done, Lex leaned back with a sigh again and contemplated his current situation. Superman hadn't picked up his shoes, jacket, or other miscellaneous items, being about as accommodating as he ever was, which was less than not at all, so everything was still back at the loft. Lex had no idea whether any of it would still be there come morning, primarily because he wasn't sure whether Clark had really been the one driving the vehicle, or merely gotten back from his intergalactic trip early and gone headhunting him as he usually did after long or distant excursions. It seemed strange, the more he thought on it, and Lex couldn't help but wonder... if Clark had been driving, had he been doing so while wearing his suit and, if so, why hadn't he just picked it up and flown the vehicle the whole way instead?

Lex turned his head from side to side, a tired shake of negation at himself. Best not to dwell. It would just be yet another oddity in a long line of things that Lex didn't know and didn't understand about Clark, that he would never find out. Primary among them was why Clark refused to acknowledge that they'd ever known each other. Lex truly couldn't comprehend it. On the day of the Apocalypse, he'd woken up in Metropolis General with a horrendous headache, next to Tess, who had apparently been attacked. His security staff had informed him that they'd found them both collapsed on the top floor of LuthorCorp Towers. Lex couldn't remember any of it; only that he'd been half-dead from his extreme frostbite injuries and complications arising thereof -- mainly secondary infections at the burn sites and imminent massive organ failure, because his immune system had been running on overdrive for months and his body could no longer support the additional stress.

But Lex hadn't been near-death then, though, and still wasn't now. It was disconcerting that he didn't really remember much of the in-between, except some sporadic moments of being rescued and then told of his relocation to the medical labs under the mansion for recuperation. He had a feeling that he'd had more than enough of his fair share of medical procedures, though, given his new and very appalling set of scars. But after he'd been cleared by the hospital nurses, he hadn't even managed to get out the front doors before getting ambushed -- he'd been immediately cornered by his LuthorCorp staff, who had informed him that he'd been away for _years_. He'd promptly found himself whisked away and safely ensconced back in the LuthorCorp Towers again, and swamped with work before the shock of that had even properly set in.

When he'd _finally_ been able to get away from the most time-critical paperwork and disaster-relief organization efforts, and once again carved out some space to breathe within, his first order of business had been catching up with Clark. He'd thought that should be his top priority, given what had happened in the Arctic and all of the lost time between them, as well as what Clark's abilities and his own resources could do in the aftermath of this sort of crisis if combined in mutual accord. But Clark had given him the cold shoulder, avoiding or otherwise ignoring all his attempts at communication. When he'd eventually given up, frustrated for the moment, and instead sought after Tess for a rundown of what, exactly, had occurred in his absence and under her watch, he'd discovered that Tess had disappeared from the hospital.

Things had gone from bad to worse after that. He'd had to fight strange allegations that he wasn't who he thought and said he was, and there had been a horriffic fight over LuthorCorp itself, with Tess in absentia and only communicating through lawyers. She had apparently discovered her half-blood status as a Luthor, and wanted her share of the company. With the state of affairs that Lionel had left things in upon his death, and the transfer of property to Lex's name only having been half complete at the time that Lex himself had vanished under mysterious circumstances, things had been bad enough. But the transfer of all that to Tess' control, the mismanagement, removal, and otherwise raiding of the majority of his funds from nearly all of his accounts, and then his supposed death -- which had left Tess the legal inheritor of everything that was left -- had left the ownership and day-to-day runnings of the company in all one big tangled utterly horrific mess, now that he was confirmed alive again alongside her. Lex was _still_ dealing with the fallout from that, to this day. He hoped that someday it would all finally be resolved, to his unabashed relief and hopefully to his satisfaction. But what Lex really couldn't understand was why she refused to take him up on his offer to split the company; he'd even offered her first choice as to which sections she wanted. But Tess was adamant about taking it all or nothing, which wasn't reasonable, especially when "nothing" apparently meant selling off the entire company for pennies on the dollar and putting tens of thousands of people out of work worldwide.

Lex had eventually run into Clark at the Daily Planet -- and he'd been almost unrecognizeable, with the way he'd looked, talked, and acted. When Lex had tried to engage him in conversation, Clark acted almost as though he had some sort of retrograde amnesia, and then all but run off on him. It worried Lex that Clark might have been seriously hurt in the Arctic as well -- the simulations he'd run of the Orb's effect on Kryptonian physiology had only been a partially-educated guess at best -- and when Lex saw Superman in his first live TV appearance, he'd become convinced that Kal-El must have suffered from some sort of brain damage, because there was no way that the Clark he knew would have _ever_ gone out in public wearing something like _that_.

When Lex began garnering information on the 'new' Superman, and then 'The Blur' and 'The Red And Blue Blur' as he traced Clark's actions during his absence back in time, he became more than a little disconcerted with Clark's newfound belligerence, arrogance, and antagonistic behavior. He heard the rumors about 'The Toyman' and his encounters with Kal-El, as well as 'Checkmate' and others, and he slowly realized that for his own safety, he could never let Clark know that he knew who he was out of the suit. Because, if he understood what he'd observed properly and his deduction was correct, Clark in his new personality shift to this much more _alien_ Kal-El was even more touchy about his 'secret identity' than he'd ever been before.

If Lex let it slip that he knew, he might be subjected to a telepathic scrubbing or magical mind-wiping... or worse... because, from what Lex had found -- or rather, _not_ found -- someone had been going around and 'cleaning up' after Clark in just this manner, though whether Clark knew of this himself Lex could only guess. What Lex _did_ know was that most of the residents of Smallville didn't have any more than the vaguest of  memories of Clark anymore -- even people's high school yearbooks had gone missing... and those had just been the most noticeable lacks. Lex had never been more relieved that he'd been discreet in his inquiries, and grateful that he'd conducted them solely by himself, and on his own time.

Oddly enough, whatever had been done to them to have them forget Clark, had also had what Lex assumed was the _unintentional_ side effect of also only having vague memories of Lex, as well as, more notably, Lionel. And, in the absence of solid memories upon which to base a hatred of all things Luthor, Lex had found himself more welcomed in town than he'd even been before. He'd also discovered quickly that whatever procedure had been inflicted upon them had no impact on the formation of _new_ memories... and then he found himself settling back into Smallvillian town life much faster than he'd ever have thought.

And, with the mansion a burned-out wreck and Tess fighting him for it besides, he'd found himself needing a different abode in which to dwell when he was in town.

So, when the property had become available, he'd promptly bought first the old Potter horse farm, and then the Kent's old homestead.

He'd done so behind several layers of documentation, aliases, and ownership, of course, because the last thing he needed was people showing up at his door when he wanted to escape the city for a bit. He _certainly_ didn't want Tess trying to go for the jugular by demanding his other town properties -- Plant No. 3 and the Talon -- as part of the settlement their lawyers were _still_ trying to get her to be reasonable about and agree to, either.

So, yes, to say that Lex was none-too-happy about being hauled off of his own property in the middle of the night, at a time when he thought he might actually get to enjoy it because the Big Brain-Damaged Alien was _supposed_ to have been away, was a bit of an understatement.

Lex sighed again, crossed his arms, relaxed into the hard concrete block wall as best he could manage, and tried to make the most of it. While not the most comfortable environs, it was quiet, at least. Smallville wasn't known for its large criminal population; the second generation of meteor-freaks had tended to be a little saner than the ground-zeros. Either the town had become a little more accommodating to them and grown accustomed to dealing with the occasional outburst, or having been born with and grown into their powers meant that the chemical balance in their brains was a little less out of whack. ...Perhaps a little of both. While Lex didn't doubt that what was usually induced by the shock to the system -- from the first- or second-overexposure to meteor rock radiation, which generated the ground-zero and first-gen mutations -- also caused a very large shift in brain chemistry to allow for immediate control of those new abilities, Lex also knew that that the new mutants would not have fit in any better than their predecessors if the town had decided to fear and revile them for their differences. Sometimes Lex wondered if that was why he'd been welcomed as if back to the fold; perhaps his own oddities made him fit in more than stand out here, like so many others now.

And all this was really the only reason that Lex wasn't worried about being locked in this jail cell. He knew that the bars didn't keep the rest of world out, but the sherriff did. Anyone in town who might want to see him could get through, but who here would want to hurt him? ...No-one. Not anymore.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The hearing took place at four in the morning -- old Judge Ellis had woken with muscle cramps from working too hard on his garden the previous afternoon, it seemed -- and it went without a hitch. The paperwork, however, took a bit longer, as the Sherriff and court secretary hadn't needed to formally file anything of this sort in an age, and with the 'prime witness' missing-in-action and unable to testify, it required just that many more forms to deal with. They were flagging a bit as they worked -- the sherriff for being up most of the night, and the secretary for having been woken at such an ungodly hour. Lex managed to make them coffee using the old coffee maker in the police break room, though, and that made the difference between getting out of there at 6:20am and being stuck there until much later that morning when the first shift would have shown up for the day.

The sherriff offered to drive Lex back home, and Lex gratefully took him up on it, planning to change his shoes and give the man back his jogging footwear.

However, as the sherriff pulled over and Lex got out, he felt an unusual sense of disorientation for a moment. He turned and almost asked where they were, as the sherriff opened the driver's side and slowly got out, as well. Lex stared about him at the unbroken skyline for a moment before the wind picked up and it hit him.

The farmhouse and the barn were gone. Lex smelled the scent of charred remnants of wood and metal, and finally made out the original foundations for the structures as he stared down at the low thin piles of leftover ash blowing away in the weak but growing light of the sunrise.

"Hm," said the sherriff, scratching his head absently. "Looks like you got yourself an alien problem, son." He said it in the way most people talked about a termite infestation.

Lex's head whipped back to the man, about to sharpen his tongue on him, but when he saw the slight frown on the sherriff's face and realized that the slow, mildly concerned tone was not mocking in the least, the words truly meant to express some abstract level of concern for his well-being, his anger deflated.

Instead, he merely sighed deeply and replied, "Yes."

"Might want to get yourself a restraining order," the town sherriff offered.

 _Expressing concern for my well-being **and** my safety, how droll,_ Lex mentally amended, grimacing, yet failing at feeling as sarcastic as he'd originally intended.

But, out loud -- "I don't have proof it was him," Lex replied dourly, sliding his hands into his pockets.

"Hm," the sherriff replied noncommitally. "...You going to be ok at the other place?" the man asked after a considering pause, tilting his head up, then glancing across the road.

"Sure," Lex said. He slammed the police cruiser's door lightly and started to walk back down the drive, then paused, turned back and said, "About the shoes--"

The Sherriff waved him off. "Get some sleep, settle back in, give them back whenever. Lord knows I don't need another excuse to not go off running after the wife," he said with a twitching smile, "but I could sure use one."

"Ah," said Lex, remembering that the sherriff's wife was an avid jogger, and the sherriff himself... not so much. Not being one to chide a man for wanting to avoid a verbal browbeating from a spouse, Lex merely gave him a slight smile back in return.

The sherriff pulled away, and Lex watched him go with a short wave as a friendly 'goodbye'. Then he sighed and crossed the street, headed towards Lana's old house, a measely mile-long walk away. It seemed that his luck wasn't completely bad that morning, as he found to his relief that no-one had stolen the spare key from under the lone cactus plant on the front porch. He let himself in and, too tired to even go up the stairs, made do with what was on the first floor, and instead collapsed on the dust-cloth-covered couch in the living room. He didn't even bother to take the shoes off.

~*~*~*~*~*~


End file.
